174 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



and recognising no individual existences of any kind, 

 by falling into the Oharybdis of having a name for 

 everything, or by some piece of intellectual sharp 

 practice like that of the shrewd but unprincipled 

 Ulysses. If we were consistent honourable gentle- 

 men, into Oharybdis or on to Scylla we should go like 

 lambs; every subterfuge by the help of which we 

 escape our difficulty is but an arbitrary high-handed 

 act of classification that turns a deaf ear to everything 

 not robust enough to hold its own; nevertheless even 

 the most scrupulous of philosophers pockets his con- 

 sistency at a pinch, and refuses to let the native hue 

 of resolution be sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 

 thought, nor yet fobbed by the rusty curb of logic. 

 He is right, for assuredly the poor intellectual abuses 

 of the time want countenancing now as much as ever, 

 but so far as he countenances them, he should bear in 

 mind that he is returning to the ground of common 

 sense, and should not therefore hold himself too stiffly 

 in the matter of logic. 



As with life and death so with design and absence 

 of design or luck. So also with union and disunion. 

 There is never either absolute design rigorously per- 

 vading every detail, nor yet absolute absence of design 

 pervading any detail rigorously, so, as between sub- 

 stances, there is neither absolute union and homoge- 

 neity, nor absolute disunion and heterogeneity ; there 

 is always a little place left for repentance ; that is to 

 say, in theory we should admit that both design and 

 chance, however well defined, each have an aroma, as 

 it were, of the other. Who can think of a case in 



